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SOTF Mini Content Rules
SOTF Mini and Battle Royale In the worlds of SOTF Mini, unless stated otherwise, Battle Royale, Koushun Takami’s novel from which the basic premise of SOTF was derived, does not exist, for a number of continuity reasons. If Battle Royale did exist within continuity, it would predate many of the initial SOTF events. This, in turn, would suggest that either the various forces (the generals of The Program, the TV Executives, or Danya from SC) based their actions on the book (which would stretch believability and the tone of the story) or b. Koushun Takami in some fashion became aware of their plans and chose an incredibly circuitous route of warning the public (which would stretch believability and tone in much the same way and drag a real life individual into the plot in a way that feels uncomfortable and invasive). As such, no references to Battle Royale should be made, and any extant references should be considered non-canon. Similarly, The Hunger Games would be exceedingly unlikely to be published in the various Mini worlds. SOTF predates The Hunger Games both in and out of character, and a world where such events occur with fair regularity would probably not turn to them as literature for adolescents, or would not do so in such a condemnatory fashion. Thus, references to The Hunger Games should similarly be avoided and those in the text should be treated as non-canon. Other death game type stories are on a case-by-case basis, but any stories that involve bomb collars, a bunch of kidnapped teens, and a limited arena exclusively populated by the combatants are probably out, especially if they’re not in some fashion clearly fantasy or science fiction in genre. Stories featuring only a few of these elements are probably fine, though. There is, of course, one major exception: the universe of SOTF-TV. There, SOTF-themed media is incredibly common, and indeed a large amount of knockoff-SOTF style stories abound. That said, Battle Royale and The Hunger Games are still out—in this case, to avoid the implication that either they ripped off SOTF-TV or that SOTF-TV ripped them off. It's cleaner overall to make this a blanket rule than to fiddle with possible implications for a single universe, especially when there's little to no narrative benefit for doing so. Acceptability of Non-Original Characters All characters submitted to SOTF Mini must be original characters. What that means is, you may not submit characters from movies, comic books, etc. You may not submit characters who are direct inserts of celebrities. You may not submit profiles written by other handlers without their express permission. The staff will be googling every character's name as part of the approval process. Note that coincidental name matches are fine. For example, over on Main, V4's Quincy Jones was nothing like the musician of the same name. Quincy would be totally fine under this policy. This rule does not mean that you cannot take inspiration, even heavy inspiration, from other sources. We all do that. It does mean you can't lift characters wholesale. Your character should always be primarily your own original creation. Elements of homage, parody, and inspiration are fine, but they should be just that: elements that contribute to an overall original character. Also, in the interests of realism and overall game tone, we will not be accepting close relatives of characters featured in past SOTF Mini versions (or any escapees, winners, or survivors of any nature) unless specifically noted otherwise in the information for a version. As a default guideline, any character of first cousin or closer status to a past contestant will not be approved. Acceptability of Characters Named After Real Life Individuals While we understand that many handlers like to insert fictionalized versions of their friends/family into Mini, this can be extremely problematic. Mini turns up fairly high on Google results, and people tend to be very displeased when their personal information is attached to a fictional death game, especially if, say, they are written as psychotic murderers. As such, characters must have their names changed enough as to be unconnected to real life friends and family of their writers by a Google search, unless the basis of the character has given express permission for the usage of their name, with full understanding of what the site is and what sort of stories are told. We realize that there is no way to double-check this before it becomes an issue, but if it idoes/i become an issue, (such as if we receive angry PMs and emails from someone asking us to take their name off the site), the consequences will be very dire indeed. There is no way to automatically replace names, so any change requires a massive amount of staff time and attention. Even a minor character may end up taking hours of by-hand replacement. More than that, coming up on Mini can be a bad thing for people when applying for jobs, and we don't want them to only find out after the fact that one of their friends accidentally caused them trouble. Note that this only applies to characters based on people/the names of people who the handler knows. We're not going to penalize you if a random person has the same name as your character; the odds of picking a name with nobody attached to it are fantastically low. Similarly, we will not be changing names of characters at the request of people uninvolved with the character/handler, as even a cursory glance at the profile should prove that there is no relation. Basically, it's the old disclaimer about resemblance to real people living or dead being coincidental: if it is purely coincidental, everything's fine. On Plagiarism Plagiarism, or the presenting of others' work as your own, is forbidden on Mini. It is an issue we take very seriously, and one that has come up with unfortunate frequency in our history. We care about plagiarism for a number of reasons. We're a creative endeavor ourselves, and as writers we're part of one of the demographics most frequently affected by plagiarism. As a collaborative project, SOTF is also particularly affected as we can't cleanly change or remove one element of a story without it rippling to affect others; a character can't simply be removed from a version without requiring huge adjustments to every thread and interaction they were involved in. Even minor changes of a handful of lines can be labor-intensive in certain situations. We consider the use of non-original characters and writing to be plagiarism. This can be as major as stealing characters, but it also encompass smaller things, like putting chunks of published novels into posts or stealing dialogue from comic books. There's often a thin line between inspiration, homage, and plagiarism. We totally understand that these are all different things, and we absolutely allow handlers to take inspiration from other media and include nods and homages in their work. What is or is not okay is all about context. Generally speaking, any character on SOTF should be easily recognizable as something besides an insert of some non-original character. If the character shares a first name and a hobby with a non-original character, but has other interests unrelated to the source material and a unique, non-copied personality, you're probably in good shape. If you pattern a character's personality off a story you like, but give them a wholly different name, backstory, and set of interests, you should be fine. However, if your character is Herlock Sholmes, master detective, that's not cool. This is true, for the record, even of characters who are, like Sherlock Holmes, in the public domain. Similarly, you should almost always clearly indicate when you're quoting from or referencing material not created by you in your posts. If you want to interweave song lyrics, poetry, or a quote from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment into your post, you're free to do so—provided you clearly indicate you are doing so and that the bulk of the post is by you. This can even easily be done in narrative in most cases; if your character is singing a song, they presumably know they didn't make it up and their awareness of this can convey that information to the audience. You don't even have to name the author; "He remembered some lines from a poem he read in English class, but could not for the life of him recall the author," is totally fine. The key thing is to make sure your audience knows you're not the original author of whatever you're putting in your post. Please do not assume that something will be obvious to your reader to the point where clarifying isn't necessary. Our members come from a wide range of cultures and have a vast span of interests, so while a reference to the works of Robert Frost may indeed be obvious to most of the site, a teenager from France may have never even heard of him. There's a slight exception to this for thread titles. Generally speaking, titles even of published media are frequently quotes and references. It's no different on SOTF. Thread titles have historically often been taken from song lyrics, lines of dialogue from movies, etc., and generally speaking there is no expectation of originality when it comes to thread titles. If you're ever unsure whether something is sufficiently distanced or marked as to not constitute plagiarism, feel free to contact the staff. The staff will come to an agreement and give you an answer. In general, though, it's always best to err on the side of citing. SOTF Mini House Style To keep the site easily readable and generally cohesive, staff requires that narratives be primarily written in third person past tense. If in doubt, that is always the right choice. That said, we are an artistic community with a focus on creative writing. If you want to branch out a little (brief lapses into first person or present tense, say), there's no problem with that whatsoever unless it starts to cause comprehensibility issues. Posts shouldn't be entirely in first or second person or entirely in present or future tense as a matter of course, however. Staff are more lenient about this when it comes to threads that do not involve other handlers (one-shots and the like), as they don't make the overall trajectory difficult to follow. In threads outside the primary Sandbox/Game routine (say, World of TV threads), you can do whatever you want. Staff only enforces a house style for the sake of game cohesion, and we're just as excited as the members about seeing creativity that poses no threat to the overall game experience. Proofreading, Grammar, Etc. Staff requests that all handlers proofread posts to the best of their ability prior to submitting them. We are aware that members have vastly different levels of familiarity with the intricacies of English grammar, especially given the large number of members for whom English is not a primary language, and we do not demand or expect perfection. We just ask that you do your best, so that your posts are as easy as possible for others to read and understand. If there is ever truly a problem in this arena, staff will contact a handler to discuss it privately, but this has never happened in the site's history so you really shouldn't worry about it. Handlers are generally very good about helping each other out on this front. Excessive Formatting Please do not use formatting that makes your posts excessively hard to read. Anything that stretches the width of the post window on a standard resolution laptop is an issue—this tends to come about from overuse of size tags or from writing extremely long strings of characters without any spaces. Mini has many skins available to members, so please be aware that a color you use for text may end up difficult to read on other skins. If you must use text in colors outside the most typical primary and secondary ones, we suggest that you make use of the bgcolor code to ensure a static background color (and thus a standardized reading experience). On the whole, staff also requests that you carefully consider the use of nonstandard formatting. It is allowed, but the story can become very hard to follow when every post is a rainbow of colors aligned unusually. Moreover, such flourishes are generally not particularly well regarded by the site's readers. Realism and Acceptability of Character Actions Much as Mini characters should be grounded high school students, their actions should be realistic to whichever universe they happen to be in. This means that the laws of physics apply, characters should be roughly as competent at given tasks as their profiles indicate, and so on. Aside from that loose guideline, however, characters may do whatever you want them to, so long as it does not conflict with other rules. Staff are very hands-off in this respect. Your characters are yours, to do with as you please, and staff will only intervene in the event of clear unrealism or of some other sort of rule-breaking. Content Warnings Staff requires certain threads to bear a content warning, to better allow handlers who prefer to avoid certain material to avoid it. Generally speaking, content warnings for extreme violence are left up to handler discretion. SOTF Mini is a collection of very violent stories, though if you're going to have an especially graphic torture scene it may be worth providing warning for the squeamish. As a default, though, handlers can safely assume that there will be major violence going on in games. Any sexual content that shows up directly in a post should be marked with a content warning. Characters referencing sex in casual fashion does not require a warning, but two characters getting into the nitty-gritty of their experiences would probably merit it. Anything sexual beyond a PG-13 rating or so should definitely bear a warning. Instances of abuse fall outside the typical Mini violence spectrum and should be marked with a content warning accordingly. Particularly extreme drug content likely falls under the same umbrella, but is not particularly likely to meet the realism threshold anyways. Content warnings are unnecessary for profanity, light drug usage, alcohol and tobacco usage, religious blasphemy, and so on. If in doubt about whether a thread merits a warning, you should always feel free to consult staff or other members. Extreme Content Certain subjects fall on the extreme edge of what we see on Mini, and are subject to extra scrutiny due to their potential to be mishandled or to cause harm or distress to members. If your character's story outside of the game is to feature any of the following, you must note it during character applications in their profile. We further strongly suggest that these subjects are treated with extreme caution or outright avoided, even in-game, unless you are totally sure you know what you're doing. We also suggest you be aware that even in such cases where you are confident, the community is likely to be cautious and lukewarm in its reactions. *Abuse: Abuse, physical, emotional, sexual, and otherwise, is an issue unfortunately close to home for a number of members past and present. Dealing with abuse poorly can be greatly offensive, coming off as making light of situations that have caused serious distress and harm to members. Even handled well, abuse tends to make for uncomfortable, hard to read scenes that turn many members away. *Inappropriate Sexual Relationships/Sexual Assault: Incest, relationships with major age gaps involving a minor, rape of all varieties, and other instances of sexual assault or harassment again lands tragically close to some of our members, and further rarely if ever offers value to a story of the sort told on Mini. Many of these topics run a great risk of being poorly handled tonally, and treated as in some fashion erotic or commonplace rather than horrific and aberrant. Tread extremely carefully if you must tread here at all. Ideally, don't. *Extreme Violence Outside the Game: Violence is different in the context of a death game than in normal life. While somewhat less common a real life issue than the two preceding ones, major violence can quickly make a character come across as wholly unbelievable, and can again come off as disrespectful to those who actually suffer tragedies. If in any doubt whatsoever, avoid these issues. We strongly suggest, even if they seem totally fitting for an in-game storyline, some major soul-searching and consultation with staff and members of the community before enacting any plans. Large-Scale Area Changes/Destruction If you wish to have your character take actions that would cause major and significant damage or change to an area, you must first secure permission from the staff team. Generally speaking, staff will weigh the plausibility of the changes/destruction alongside the likely reactions of those running the game and grant or deny permission accordingly. For example, the executives of SOTF-TV allow a certain measure of destruction, but are liable to intervene if a student is ruing a location that makes for a good set piece or is key to the arena's functionality (either as setting for game or in whatever capacity it will serve once the game concludes). Danya and the SC terrorists, on the other hand, may take a much looser stance and allow destruction to play out as it will so long as there's no possibility of it being used to further escape, but in such situations would crack down quickly and brutally. If causing a certain type of change or destruction would lead to a character's death, staff will inform a handler of this fact and allow them to change course. If a handler really really wants to have one of their characters die for the change, though, staff will usually be willing to let that happen. Finally, in the unlikely event that for some reason an area change or destruction is problematic for out-of-character reasons, it will be disallowed by staff. Category:Game Mechanics